Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/170

160 man is absolutely a nonentity before he acts, or that he actually creates his Being. This we are very far indeed from affirming. Prior to the act of consciousness, he possesses, as we have said, an existence in the eyes of others; and this species of existence is undoubtedly given. Anterior to this act, the foundations of his Being are wonderfully and inscrutably laid. He is a mighty machine, testifying his Creator's power. But at this time being destitute of consciousness, we again maintain that he is destitute of personality, and that therefore he wants that which constitutes the true reality and proper life of humanity. We maintain, further, that this personality, realised by consciousness, is a new kind of existence reared up upon the ground of that act; that, further, there was no provision made in the old substratum of unconscious Being for the evolution of this new act; but that, like the fall of man (with which perhaps it is in some way connected), it is an absolutely free and underived deed, self-originated, and entirely exempt from the law of causality; and, moreover, in its very essence, the antagonist of that law. This we shall endeavour to make out in the following chapters; and if we can succeed in showing this act to be primary original and free, of course it will follow that the Being which results from it must be free likewise. But, whether we succeed or not, we at any rate think that, having shown fully that the thought "I" precedes and brings along with it the reality or existence "I," and